Google Search Console vs. Searchmetrics Suite

There are lots of tools and platforms that help us rank well on search engines. While that is helpful, we do need to know how those efforts paid off. This is where Google Search Console comes in. It is vital for every business or website trying to rank well on search engines to have Google Search Console so that they can track their performance and make necessary adjustments.

Incentivized

Searchmetrics does a great job when doing optimization of your content and keywords. It is less appropriate when doing off page optimization like backlinks.

Incentivized

• You can also submit your sitemap directly to Google and get it crawled.
• You can also index and crawl you updated and new webpages.
• It also displays errors that are preventing your site pages to get indexed in Google.
• You get a list of all the keywords for which your site is ranking.
• You can track its position, CTR and impressions.

Incentivized

• Large database of companies and search terms to compare with our site.
• In the research section, we are able to do research on an unlimited number of sites/keywords
• Paid and Organic search research all in one place to make research and performance comparisons a lot easier

Incentivized

• It can be a little difficult to navigate
• More training resources would be an asset. A beginner is given the power to completely destroy a sites search results at the push of a button. Likewise it is a powerful tool to enhance search results also.
• An option to take care of multiple versions of the same site simultaneously would be helpful. An option to use the same validation script across all versions and administer them simultaneously would be a time save (i.e. non-www, www, http://, and https:// versions of the same site).

Incentivized

• Research into specific languages when working with multilingual countries
• More keyword data in smaller countries

Incentivized

We are currently using an agency and do not need Searchmetrics services at this time. If we do need research metrics in the future, we will probably go with them. The only deterrent is that we got suckered into an additional year with them because we were a few days late on opting out of the auto-renew. Although I was very upset about getting stuck an extra year paying for services I do not need, that is probably the only issue I have with the company, so if you can avoid that, it's a pretty good product.

Incentivized

It's easy to use, but some features are lacking a clear explanation. Somethings don't always match up. For example, the Core Web Vitals often doesn't match what you would see in the Chrome Lighthouse report or the Google Page Speed Insights tool. The tool itself is a little too basic and has to be used alongside other SEO tools and other Google properties such as Analytics

Incentivized

As with all Google software, your primary source of help is their forums, their knowledge base articles, or whatever tutorials you can find on the web. Often answers on their forums are not straightforward and may not address the actual issue you're experiencing. The KB articles are typically written like instruction manuals - for better or for worse. Tutorials on the web may vary, but the odds are good someone out there had the same questions as you and was kind enough to document their experience.

Incentivized

SEMRush is a supplementary tool we use to provide competitive analysis. While it does, or should, provide the same data that Search Console does, but I only fully trust Search Console when it comes to basic performance in Google for the sites we develop and own. SEMRush, and other products like it, does provide much more in-depth insights that can help drive business decisions, including site performance on other search engines, along putting organic and paid search performance in one spot. However, SEMRush costs money while Search Console is free.

Incentivized

We originally selected Searchmetrics because we got more bang for our buck. On the research end, we could do unlimited searches without the cost of the service going up. As for the historical data, we could store more trending data and do deeper research than we could with the competitor. The monthly fee was almost half (if i remember correctly, but it's been a few years) of what what we were paying before with a competitor.

Incentivized

• Given that this is a free tool, the return on investment has been particularly high - we've identified and addressed a few site issues that could have meant a reduction in search traffic.
• Our organic search traffic has been on the rise in part due to the insights gained from the search traffic analytics provided within the console.

Incentivized

• It had a positive impact on the ROI. As the websites rank better the revenue raised.
• Searchmetrics Suite is an expensive product, it is too expensive for small websites.

Incentivized